Holy shit!

I woke up this morning, all set to go to the airport, looked at my clock, and found out that I slept right through my alarm at 5:30, and it was now 8:15!?!?! Panic! While putting on my clothes I called a taxi. I got my luggage, locked my door and ran down the five stairs as fast as possible. The taxi was already there and took me to the train station at Hon Atsugi.

I ran inside, went to the ticket office and asked them to sell me a ticket to Narita airport. I had to transfer in Shinjuku, and probably would not make it in time. The guy told me the train would leave in 10 minutes. I asked him when it would arrive in Narita, and the guy left to look it up. And he took my ticket with him o_0. 9 minutes later he came back and told me they were still looking it up, and I had to wait... WTF!? I ran to the train and took the rapid express to Shinjuku.

In Shinjuku I ran again to the JR Narita Express, barely made it to the platform in time, asked someone about the ticket and found out that my ticket wasn't valid for that train o_0.... I asked where to buy the right ticket, and the JR guy told me to go back up away from the platform and to the ticket machines. Did I mention that the train was arriving in 2 minutes? I managed to stay polite and ran to the other side of the platform to find out if there was a ticket machine there, but no. In the end I just entered the train, and another JR guy charged me another 1100 yen extra... Which, by the way, is still ridiculously cheap compared to Dutch prices, and this train is on time.

Narita arrival: 10:57. I ran to the first security check right after leaving the train station, got through, tried to run up 4 escalators with a heavy suitcase but gave up after the second one, and ran to the KLM check-in counter. I didn't have much hope. It was ten past eleven. The plane would leave at 11:30, and I was supposed to check in my luggage at least one hour before departure. And I still hadn't made it past customs, immigration and the final security check yet....

Luck was on my side!!!! While waiting in line for the check-in counter I noticed for the first time the sign that hung above all the KLM ladies: Flight 862 is delayed from 11:30 to 14:55. Please accept our apologies. Peace. Luck. Happiness! When I saw that sign my heart rate finally dropped to normal again.

So I casually walked through security, casually did some shopping, slowly walked around the tax-free area, slowly had lunch, and slowly walked to the gate ^_^. There I tried to access the internet through my laptop, but you had to pay by creditcard, and of course my card didn't work.... Luckily for me there was a very nice guy sitting next to me who lent me his one-day ID, since he was done with it anyway. Thank you so much, guy with English accent!

So it's 13:00 now. Still have to wait 1 hour and 10 minutes for check-in. Argh, I'm calming down now. I never oversleep for anything, so why did I oversleep today, one of the few days in my life where it's actually critical that I wake up in time? It's seriously strange for me. It's my habit to me too early for everything, I don't think I've ever been too late. At least not for important things. Well, I'll have 3 weeks to think about that in Holland.

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